Dexter Recap - Dirty Harry

I've been missing the "in the line of fire" action of Dexter and this week, it showed its rearing head. Well, it kind of peeked its head above the water of a violent kiddie pool, but it was there. As exciting as Dexter sometimes is, it's not a very smart show, and that chaps my ass.

So Dexter shows up at the scene of Debra and Lundy's attack, suspected as a Vacation Murderer crime, and finds out Debra is fine, while Lundy is dead. Debra ends up getting out of the hospital fairly quickly and takes a temporary residence with Dexter and Rita. But that's later. At the scene, Quinn is halfway accosted by his reporter skank, who is all apologies for her constant news leaks. (He gives her ghastly oral sex later and rises with an entirely smooth chin/lip area. Suspension of disbelief, surely.) Batista givers reporter ho a lead in V.M. suspect Johnny Rose being a syphilis sufferer, in the hopes of getting his gal pal Nikki to retaliate in that loverly sense. Nikki ends up seeing herself on the front page, in an afternoon edition. In this time of newspaper decline...really, Miami? She's soon found in an alley, tweaked out and pointing a gun at the ground, bitching incoherently at Johnny Rose. Quinn tazes her.

It's all okay. But Debra isn't sure it means closure. And Dexter is certain it had nothing to do with anything. Let me slow things down. Laguerta fesses up to her superiors that she and Batista have a relationship. After their fine work in capturing Nikki Weld, she's told she has to remove Batista from Homicide. He didn't even want people to know. Some people know how to keep secrets. Or...

Due to a terribly timed call from his secret apartment's landlord, Dexter has to lie to Rita about why he keeps his old place. I forgot Rita was under the impression that Dexter was a heroin addict a few seasons ago. Rita has a heart to heart with Debra about why things would be this way, and Debra relates. After all, in the hospital, when her lova-lova Anton visits, she confesses to her affair with Lundy, and gets Anton to leave her bullet-holed body behind, which he does with little fanfare. Debra later has an overly emotional moment with Dexter at the spot of their shooting, and how little evidence there is that it happened. I don't think that Jennifer Carpenter is a terrible actress, but I think the show's editing sometimes shortchanges her. Dexter shows up later at the secret apartment, and has to tell Rita he's keeping Harry's clothes and gun in a trunk, but Rita is not buying it. He probably could have shown her all of Lundy's shit, and that would be that, but he didn't.

Dexter hits up Lundy's Trinity Killer headquarters before more official heads find it. He rapes the scene and takes all the evidence to his secret apartment, which has been gone over by the maintenance man who called Rita to begin with. He listens to Lundy's amazingly redundant little cassette tapes, which he can stop and start at the beginning and end of sentences. They only say things that have been said before, but Dexter finds out about the office building that Trinity ran into Lundy outside of. There are some weird Harry's-ghost scenes, where Harry is now smarter than Dexter, and reminds him of a tape left in Lundy's recorder he had on scene, which Dexter steals from evidence, and ends up getting Trinity's description.

Speaking of, Lithgow has a useless scene where he's picky about his breakfast, and then buys a hammer indecisively. He then runs Intel on a security guy at the spoken-of office building. Trinity passes up a coffee from a trendy coffee place, and actually disses caffeine, smoking, drinking, having fun, and not wanting to murder people. I think we get it. But what's going on? Well that brown on your shirt is the shit hitting the fan. The next paragraph is to be read with shivery legs.

Dexter stakes out the office building. Trinity is inside lurking around. Dexter pops into the building, and finds that the security station is empty. But the security guy is still alive, walking around. Dexter reaches the main security office, complete with all the video screens, and he sees what is interspliced...Trinity has taken the coffee vendor, and, while referring to him as his own father, dents his face from forehead to chin with the hammer he bought. The guy says that he's a father, so that fits in with Trinity's motives. Dexter doesn't know where to find him, and then technology helps, and he knows the room number.

Not knowing whether he's taking stairways or elevators, he runs outside, hoping to find a vehicle. He hears noise coming from a parking garage, and sees Trinity leaving in a huge obvious van with dark windows. After a short chase through town, he finds Trinity arriving at a suburban house, in a dead end. And he walks up to a door, which is opened by a pretty lady, with children seen through brightly lit windows. Trinity is a family man, and Dexter stops his approach, thinking that there is something to relate to here. Isn't this how last season went, with Dexter relating to an over-zealous moron? Granted, Lithgow isn't going to go Copa Cabana like Jimmy Smits, but the episode shouldn't have ended on such a similar note. The last ten minutes were pretty fucking cool, so dammit...what happened?

A step in the right direction here. The tension is amped up. Rita isn't about to be taking no more shit from Dexter, and Debra is about suicidal. The rest of the characters are kind of blah, but Batista might do something cool now, right? I wish Lundy had stayed on to give a decent battle scene, but if he doesn't go Tony Almeida, then it's just up to Dexter. Now that he's found him, where is this show going to raise the stakes? And why does the nationally traveled Trinity Killer have a family in Miami? Why does Quinn get more story time than Masuka? Answer these questions and more, Showtime. Does anyone hate my take on things?